Published in ‘The Irish Review’, Volume 36, Number 1, Winter 2007.
Finbarr Bradley
UCD Smurfit School of Business, Dublin
tel: +353-1-7168827
email: finbarr.bradley@ucd.ie
Introduction
The EU Commission, through the Lisbon Agenda, is attempting to make Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. In Ireland, a key public policy objective is to develop a knowledge-based or network society based on cheap inputs of information. Innovation along with the generation and application of knowledge, especially in information technology and bioscience, is seen as key to achieving these goals.
Until recently, little attention or financial resources were devoted to making science and technology the driver of Irish development. Now under the National Development Plan, a vast quantity of money, some €2.5 billion between 2000 and 2006, is being spent on research and development (R&D). State agency Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), is committing considerable resources to the development of R&D centres in Irish third level institutions to promote innovation and thereby in the long-term higher economic growth.
In agriculture, EU structural reforms are designed to decouple subsidies from production, promote sustainability in land use and the diversification of rural economies. At the same time there are major public concerns about balanced regional development, ecosystem damage, animal welfare, food safety and social cohesion. It appears likely that those countries that use innovation as a foundation for achieving profitability in agriculture and food processing while satisfying the increasing quality requirements of the consumer will have the most successful rural communities in years to come. Yet the innovation capacity of Ireland, both North and South, to support sustainable rural development is characterised by fragmentation, lack of critical mass, discontinuity and little overall cohesion.
This paper asserts that the present innovation strategy pursued by the State, namely concentrating substantial resources to science and technology R&D, in the natural sciences, information technology and engineering, underestimates the contribution of the social sciences and humanities to the goal of achieving a knowledge society. This ignores, for example, how environmental and cultural values play a central role in the quality of life and well-being in communities. There is far more potential, in particular, to obtain an invigorated rural Ireland if the ideas that inspired the Irish Revival or Renaissance in the thirty or so years prior to the foundation of the State are central to the creativity agenda.
The Irish Revival
Matthews points out that the Revival is often wrongly seen as an exclusively cultural revival characterised by a backward-looking Celtic spirituality, nostalgia for Gaelic Ireland and obsessive anti-modern traditionalism.1 Yet as Kiberd puts it, the Revival:
..…achieved nothing less than a renovation of Irish consciousness and a new understanding of politics, economics, philosophy, sport, language and culture in its widest sense… the exponents of the Irish Renaissance shaped and reshaped an ancient past, and duly recalled it, giving rise to an unprecedented surge of creativity and self-confidence among the people.2
The Revival witnessed a host of economic, cultural, social and sporting self-help initiatives such as the Co-operative Movement, the Gaelic League, the Abbey Theatre and the GAA. These national movements were inspired by the relationship between culture, confidence, self-help and the development process. The founding principle of the Gaelic League, for instance, was that the Irish could only achieve their true potential in the widest sense through self-confidence, self-reliance and self-respect fostered by speaking their own language.
While the social, political and technological context today is clearly a world apart from that of the Revival, the two periods are similar in one key respect. In both, creativity offers the basis for Irish development to reach its full potential. The national spirit and self-help ethos that was the Revival’s hallmark resulted in a range of innovative social and economic ventures. Yet, its guiding theme linking national identity, community, culture, character, creativity and economic development rarely feature nowadays in public policy analysis of the knowledge society. Instead, the emphasis is on growing a so-called ‘enterprise culture’ stressing competencies, work practices, individual entrepreneurial skills and risk-taking attitudes.
It is notable how closely related national identity and the network society are in Finland, a country we in Ireland are often urged to emulate. Castells and Himanen assert that cultural identity and a strong national sentiment appear to be essential components of the information society there.3 The Finns see no inconsistency in aiming for a dynamic integration in the global economy while also strongly affirming their culture, unique language and national identity. No matter how many study trips Irish civil servants and politicians take to Finland to study that country’s economy and society, they never seem to appreciate on their return how cultural factors might also perhaps be similar drivers of Irish innovation.
Community and Creativity
Personal responsibility, moral courage, self-reliance, national feelings that breeds enterprise, a sense of citizenship and overall welfare were the driving forces behind the development vision of Plunkett, AE and the Co-operative Movement. The absence of an ethic of citizenship, in the relationship between individuals as well as between individuals and the State, is one the largest social problems now facing Ireland. Policies pursued over many decades, the predominance of economic over social goals, are largely the reason for this.
True development, and indeed the practice of economics itself, is not primarily about commercial enterprises, business, money or markets. Its focus is far broader than that and is mainly about the provision or protection of qualities. Economist Thomas Michael Power argues that economic welfare is not just the bundle of market commodities consumed within a locale. A clean environment, good schools, and a host of other non-market ‘qualities’ add to or subtract from both individual and community welfare and the quality of life.4
Creative individual activity, such as searching for new ways to improve a community, organising people and resources, within a supportive and challenging context, is the key to a vital, thriving local economy. Communities place themselves in a much better position to improve individual lives by re-establishing the importance of community itself, emphasising values and appreciating how limited a contribution the commercial part of the local economy makes to overall well-being and prosperity. They need to appreciate the potential a broad range of co-operative, non-commercial, while yet economic ventures, can make in this regard.
A common misconception, actively promoted by professional economists, often employed by private vested interests, is that qualitative or non-commercial aspects of our lives are non-economic and retard a community’s development. Concerns about the preservation of natural areas, wildlife, the quality of the air or water or the social character of communities are often thought of as non-economic, aesthetic, moral or even political concerns. With this perspective, trade-offs or balancing economic progress and ‘non-economic’ features such as cultural heritage, ways of life and special landscape are viewed as inevitable. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, policies that attempt through informed debate to discover approaches to development that promote both money and non-money values simultaneously, offer the best opportunity for a community to improve the general well-being of its citizens.
Science, Culture and Place
A major deficiency of the Revival and a crucial missing element was the exclusion of a more significant role for science, especially natural history undergoing great vibrancy at the time, as an important element in defining Irish culture. By not appreciating the powerful contribution that scientific thinking and endeavour could make to the Revival, it undoubtedly laid the seeds for the erosion of a sense of place, the degradation of the natural environment and the weakening of civic culture in Ireland as the country underwent industrialisation and became structurally integrated with a global capital and technology infrastructure.
The Revival passed up a wonderful opportunity, by not adding a broader scientific dimension to the concept of culture, to put in train a multi-dimensional or more integrated path to development than the one subsequently pursued by the State. If science had played a central role in the Revival, it could have resulted in a more enlightened attitude to a range of issues such as planning, the environment and rural development. As a consequence the country is less prepared to face the implications of moving to a more sustainable state, more necessary than ever given the EU’s emphasis on sustainability as a core objective in rural development.
Science as defined by Dorinda Outram is ‘the history of the human encounter with the natural world’ and an integral component of culture.5 Natural history involves an obvious environmental and local component and could have fitted well into a broader concept of Irishness within the Revival movement. Some like Plunkett,6 AE,7 Evans8 and Praeger9 saw that uniting diverse groups in a common purpose, renewing regional consciousness and forging of the relationship of people with the land as essential. Attis,10 Johnston11 and Wilson Foster12 argue that the architects of the Revival, since many of its premises were anti-scientific, excluded science. Yet Plunkett and AE were among the few who did realise the potential of science in development. AE, for instance, as Allen illustrates, celebrated the empirical achievements of scientists like Kelvin and Tyndall, and regarded Anglo-Ireland with its contribution to science as the central modernizing tendency in Irish culture.13 His multicultural ethic was based on the argument that uniformity of culture was bad for creativity and that it is the conflict of cultures and ideas that bring about intellectual vitality.
As Viney argues, due to the early isolation of the Irish from cultural forces that shape present-day ecological sentiments in Europe, the attitude of the clergy and ‘the biological treachery of the famine’, utility remains the benchmark of the Irish attitudes to nature and the environment.14 Since the Enlightenment, humanity has been progressively distanced from the rest of nature while science has separated objective truth from subjective morality. A great challenge for post-modern society resides in their reintegration, especially in Ireland where we sit at the bottom of the EU in our environmental performance. As Patrick Sheeran points out, a bizarre aspect of this country is that a lack of concern for design and aesthetic quality go hand in hand with a preoccupation with place.15 Yet the latter appears to have little to do with tending, cultivating or enhancing the material environment. Ireland’s shocking image is that of a country where illegal burning of rubbish is common and pockmarked throughout by a network of giant illegal landfills. This is the antithesis of a knowledge society, which is centrally concerned about place, values, culture and quality.
Education for Innovation
Stirling points out fundamental flaws in the approach now common in the education of business and technology professionals.16 This is based on a managerial or mechanistic paradigm, overlaid by a utilitarian market philosophy. Students often fail to see connections and patterns whereas in an ecological or whole-systems view of the world, the emphasis is on relationships. Thinking should be systematic rather than linear, integrative rather than fragmentary, concerned with process, emphasising dynamics rather than cause-effect and pattern rather than detail. It should be fundamentally concerned with recognising wholeness. A change of educational culture towards the realisation of human potential and the interdependence of social, economic, and ecological well-being would be transformative and constructive. It would engage the student in true learning rather than the present transmissive methodology that concerns itself mostly with the transfer of information, which is merely instructive and imposed. As Tobin Hart points out, a new kind of education is needed which includes the education of the mind and the heart, balances intuition with the analytic, focuses on character and community, and cultivates wisdom rather the mere accumulation of facts.17
The academic structuring of knowledge into separate disciplines is one of the main barriers to nurturing an innovative culture while fostering academic diversity and promoting individual creativity within Irish universities. The perspectives of the humanities, of disciplines such as anthropology, geography, linguistics, psychology and sociology, are crucial if we are to arrive at any comprehensive sense of, as Cronin puts it, ‘who we are and who we might be’.18 A liberal education is of particular benefit in a technological world and interdisciplinary studies are essential if a culture of innovation and creativity is to be developed in the Irish third level sector. Integrated programmes drawing on the arts, humanities, science and technology, can play a crucial role in this respect.
The world appears now to be on the brink of a new industrial revolution, which will transform our notions about business and lead to a fundamental shift from the purchase of goods to the delivery of quality services. This will entail a new perception of value reducing the importance of material acquisition as a measure of affluence and stressing the continuous receipt of quality, utility and performance to promote well-being. Intangible assets such as creativity, imagination, ideas, emotions, place and community will largely determine value in the knowledge society. Rather than the traditional product-oriented economy we are entering into an era of service and flow, of networks and relationships, where patterns, processes and context are crucial. Innovations that minimise the use of materials, support biodiversity and increase resource productivity will play an increasingly important role.
In a knowledge society, the sustainable or evolutionary organisation will engage in the design of products, services and processes to create a future that includes prosperity and the healthy co-evolution of human and natural systems. To develop an innovation culture, business schools, for instance, should be radically re-designed so that value, rather than knowledge transfer, is placed at the centre of the pedagogical approach. Students will then receive a better appreciation of the often-conflicting relationships between individual, community and market values, crucially important for those involved in rural community ventures.
Students need to think holistically, work in multidisciplinary groups, cope with change and develop systems and products that are sustainable and caring of nature and humanity. The more practice and experience students have of contacting and exploring their inner emotional world the more confidently they can creatively deal with change and be open to new possibilities. Sustainable innovations will increasingly reflect not balance but integration so students should grasp the concept of value through integrating the economic, environmental and social impacts of decisions. They should learn how to do more and better with less, designing products and services on industrial ecology models that mimic biological behaviour in order to minimise waste. A key challenge is to help them appreciate that a trade-off between economic, social and environmental goals is not always inevitable and that the fundamental aim is to enhance all three simultaneously through innovation.
A radical change in the education paradigm used in scientific, technological and professional education is necessary to assess student performance for this kind of learning. Traditional testing by means of examinations should be the exception rather than the rule. Evaluation should move from its present emphasis on testing knowledge of facts and jargon to instead, wherever possible, assessing how students put knowledge to practical use. Rather than requiring students to remember facts and information given them by lecturers, students would learn to create and share value largely defined themselves based on the outcome of discussion and reflection within their learning commuity. In other words, the students’ own values and interests, along with those of their fellow-students, lecturing staff, the university itself and the wider society in general should form the basic dynamic of situations in which different stakeholders learn the essence of what it is to say compete, co-operate and trade. It is only by being placed in practical situations, such as engaged in projects of interest to local enterprises and communities, and required to make decisions rather than passively ‘taking’ courses that transformative learning can occur.
Conclusion
It is essential that Ireland develop a whole-system or holistic approach to development and prosperity if what Downey and Purvis call a knowledge-based multifunctional agriculture sector, a ‘living countryside’ and a high quality of life are to be achieved in rural Ireland.19 The sentiments of AE appear to be just as relevant today as they were when written in 1917:
All these energetic people are conspiring to build factories and mills and to fill them with human labour, and they believe the more they do this the better it will be for Ireland. They talk of Ireland as if it was only admirable as a quantity rather than a quality. They express delight at swelling statistics and increased trade, but where do we hear any reflection on the quality of life engendered by this industrial development.20
A new vision of the development process is critical if we are to move to a knowledge society in this country. Pride in place, traditions and heritage along with a new emphasis on sustainability, the natural world, biodiversity and quality of life should form the bedrock for this vision. To help achieve this, the State should link its science, technology and innovation policies to those of cultural renewal and sustainability. Spending on R&D alone is not sufficient to generate an innovation culture. If the social context is ignored, the billions now devoted to R&D will not lead to a knowledge society, especially one appropriate for rural Ireland. Knowledge is more than just codified facts and know-how. Its most valuable characteristics are its tacit elements, networks of human interaction and the intangible processes embodied in relationships. A true innovation culture must be primarily founded on a spirit of self-reliance, relationships of community and trust, a sense of place, tradition, and civic engagement. Using the Revival as a guide, it might prove fruitful to explore in depth how values such as identity, civic culture and community, usually ignored in public policy discussions, could play a more central role alongside science and technology in helping achieve the goal of the Irish knowledge society.
Understanding the logic behind the Revival a century ago could help us construct a multicultural Ireland that is global yet also possesses a deep sense of place. Surviving and prospering in a multicultural world requires individuals to understand and appreciate their own cultural values. Moreover, being able to place one’s own roots in a cultural, historical and social context is necessary to appreciate the values and traditions of others. Successful intercultural encounters require that individuals believe in their own values so that they can really appreciate diversity and the cultural values of the others with whom they have to cooperate. If not, they become alienated persons, lacking a sense of identity, or sense of self as well as an enterprise spirit. As Verhelst argues, self-reliance must be understood as an act of emancipation from all harmful forms of dependence.21 For each person or local community, it is a question of preserving or reclaiming liberty and, ultimately, identity. Self-reliance in economic activities and political decisions depend on the existence of a cultural base as foundation. It is a community’s culture, wisdom, values, traditions and knowledge that justify confidence and give it breadth, the ideal preparation for developing a truly prosperous knowledge society.
Notes and References
1 P.J. Mathews, Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, The Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement (Cork: Cork University Press in Association with Field Day, 2003).
2 Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (UK: Vintage, 1996), pp. 3 & 641.
3 Manuel Castells and Pekka Himanen, The Information Society and the Welfare State: The Finnish Model (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
4 Thomas Michael Power, Environmental Protection and Economic Well-Being: The Economic Pursuit of Quality (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), p. 3.
5 Dorina Outram, ‘Negating the Natural: Or Why Historians Deny Irish Science’, The Irish Review, 1 (1986), 45-49.
6 Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century (London: John Murray, 1904).
7 George Russell (AE), The National Being (Dublin: Maunsel & Company, 1917).
8 E. Estyn Evans, The Personality of Ireland (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992).
9 Robert Lloyd Praeger, The Way that I Went (Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1937).
10 David Attis, ‘Science and Irish Identity: the Relevance of Science Studies for Irish Studies’ in P.J. Mathews (ed.), New Voices in Irish Criticism (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000).
11 Roy Johnston, ‘Science in a Post-Colonial Culture’, The Irish Review, 8 (1989), 70-76.
12 John Wilson Foster, ‘Natural History in Modern Irish Culture’, Chapter 8 in Peter J. Bowler and Nicholas Whyte (eds.), Science and Society in Ireland: The Social Context of Science and Technology in Ireland 1800-1950 (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1997).
13 Nicholas Allen, George Russell (AE) and the New Ireland, 1905-30 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003).
14 Michael Viney, ‘Woodcock for a Farthing: the Irish experience of nature’, The Irish Review, 1 (1986), 58-64.
15 Patrick Sheeran, ‘Genius Fabulae: The Irish Sense of Place’, Irish University Review, 18 (1988), 191-206.
16 Stephen Stirling, Sustainable Education: Re-Visioning Learning and Change (London: Green Books, 2001).
17 Tobin Hart, From Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).
18 Michael Cronin, ‘The Unbidden Ireland: Materialism, Knowledge and Interculturality’, The Irish Review, 31 (2004), 3-10.
19 Liam Downey and Gordon Purvis, ‘Building a Knowledge Based Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Environment’, in Charles Mollan (ed.), Science and Ireland – Value for Society (Dublin: Royal Dublin Society, 2005), pp. 121-139.
20 Russell (AE), op. cit., p. 71.
21 Thierry G. Verhelst, No Life without Roots: Culture and Development (London: Zed Books, 1990).